-- FreD - 06 Feb 2005

Fred's workroom(up, west).

Fred (longsword) is facing Fantom (bow)
   grappled by Puma (knuckles)
   attacked from ranged by Fantom (bow) and Zemekis (ancient blade)
   attacked from polearm by Prodigy (halberd)
Puma (knuckles) is grappling Fred (longsword)
Fantom (bow) is facing Fred (longsword) from ranged
   attacked from ranged by Fred (longsword)
Zemekis (acnient blade) is casting a spell on Fred (longsword) from ranged
Prodigy (halberd) is attacking Fred (longsword) from the flank in polearm distance.

Three gnomes (guitar, harp, drumsticks) are advancing on a old chair in spear formation.

A old chair is here.

You are 
   attacking Fantom from ranged distance
   encircled by Zemekis, Puma and Prodigy

Fatigue: 45
hp 69/433 gp 554/234 st 34/42

-- FreD - 08 Feb 2005

Would fiddling with the look command do any good? I know it needs some tweaking to work with sneaking/hiding.

• Would fiddling with the look command do any good? I know it needs some tweaking to work with sneaking/hiding.
  • A combat status command in different forms, some info should be displayed each round. -- PumaN

Begin with a list of all the information that is available to the player and go from there? -- PumaN - 05 Feb 2005

Begin with a list of all the information that is available to the player and go from there?

-- FreD - 04 Feb 2005

-- PumaN - 05 Feb 2005

Good idea, here's some info I can think of right now.

• Action
  • player position
    • Your position from your target (flank/surrounding/front).
    • Your distance -- (polearm, ranged, melee, and actually one more, grappled, but that counts as melee).
  • enemy position
    • Your attackers position in relation to you (flank/surrounding/front).
    • His distance from you.
  • Wether you moved or not (forward/backwards). Used when moving and attacking in the same round
  • player action
    • What kind of action
      • spell "charging"
      • wrestling/grappling someone
      • firing a bow. In this case it would be handy if you saw what weapon everyone was wielding (drawn) at first glance. As in Fred (wielding a shortsword) is here. A shiethed weapon is hiding this info.
    • What you were using (weapon, item)
    • What did you hit
      • What was the effect? (knocking back, wound, magic, armour damage)
• general info (see this as if someone walks into a room, where there fighting going on)
  • two combatants
    • their position
    • what are they doing
  • multiple combatants
    • in a party
      • formation?
    • guarding someone?
    • Again, their positions. This is less important now that you're not fighting yourself. And because the default starting range is ranged/outside combat (so you wouldn't end up right beside someone leathal justby jumping into combat).
• own info (that each combatant need to know)
  • Their fatigue/stamina, so they know how to spend the round with actions/commands. (If you don't know I use fatigue/stamina to limit what a player can do each round, instead of counting swings).
  • Their own status (grappled, stunned, wounded). And preferably this too in a "glance" manner instead of looking for your own status and wade through what just happened during the last round.

The Attacking part is easy. Thats just a matter och constructing the message sent to room. The tricky part is the "look" part of it. Just by glancing at the room should get you an overview somewhat of positions, formations, longer actions such as grapple and spells and what weapons are beeing wielded and external atrubutes such as wounds, bleeding, health status (wounded, dying, scratched).

Would fiddling with the look command do any good? I know it needs some tweaking to work with sneaking/hiding.

-- FreD - 06 Feb 2005

Begin with a list of all the information that is available to the player and go from there? -- PumaN - 05 Feb 2005

%META:TOPICINFO{author="FreD" date="1107438078" format="1.0" version="1.1"}% %META:TOPICPARENT{name="DesignDocument"}% I thought I'd raise this topic because its getting downright important.. With all stuff going on, just introducing ranges and flanks (and more statuses), makes it quite complex.

I was thinking of dynamicly changing the prompt to atleast show what you are doing right know, and to whom. Its really simple but very informative.

-- FreD - 04 Feb 2005